Home Linguistics & Semiotics Enkinaesthetic polyphony:
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Enkinaesthetic polyphony:

The underpinning for first-order languaging
  • Susan Stuart and Paul J. Thibault
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
Emotion in Language
This chapter is in the book Emotion in Language

Abstract

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co-agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterized by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity.

Abstract

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co-agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterized by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity.

Downloaded on 14.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/ceb.10.06stu/html
Scroll to top button